Eagle Rampant - Building a Republican Roman Army - WIP - Part 3

Manufacturer:   Victrix

Scale:   28mm

Hi,

just a short post about the actual eftorts according my current project. It took me a while to paint up these two guys due to the fact that I am not able to sit more than one or two hours at the moment. This is caused by the operation I had in June.

The two guys will represent two different units of velites with six miniatures each. There will be a unit with red tunics and white shields and another one with white tunics and red shields.

I like to do this pattern throughout the complete army. This has the advantage that this enables me to use the red units and white units as opposing armies playing Roman CivilWars as long as the planned army of Hannibal is not ready.

So here are the two test figures. They are not painted as clean as I usually do. Having in mind that there are about 120 figures waiting to be painted (and minimum twice the number of figures for the Carthaginians) I will have to do some easier methods for a faster paintjob. Therefore I use contrast colors for the flesh parts and the tunics with only a little bit of highlighting. But also usnig this method will make this project last very long.

Cheers

Mike

EagleRampant - The Army of Maximinus Thrax

Scale:   28mm

Hi,

This post is about an army of Romans from the early 3rd century that was lead by Emperor Maximinus Thrax (235-238 AD). This guy was not a noble men but managed to become emperor of Rome. He never came to Rome to reign the empire from its capital. There is a great documentary about Maximinus Thrax on YouTube:  Documentary Maximinus Thrax

I got this army from my friend Christopher for a very good price and I will try to use it for EsgleRampant, the Roman variant of LionRampant. Christopher has painted the figures in an excellent style and it is a pleasure to place them on the battlefield.

The army of Maximinus Thrax also fought at the Rhine and the Danube against Germanic tribes. I already have some Germanic warriors within my collection, but they will need some reinforcements. Maybe I will be lucky to find some more on eBay. My personal actual project is building a republican Roman Army for the Punic wars.

Enjoy the fotos of the great work of Christopher‘s paint job.

The terrain is again from Tabletop Modellbau. 

Cheers

Mike

The terrain from Tabletop Modellbau.

A unit of archers in the woods and a unit of heavy infantry.

Some Germanic tribesmen crossing the river.

Another Warband crossing a bridge. But the Ronans are already waiting for them.

There will be no chance for the Germanic warriors.

Some great command figures.

A unit of light infantry flanked on both sides by heavy infantry.

The Roman cavalry at the ready.

Roman archers aiming their enemies.

The Germanic Warband.

A special book about the Army of Maximinus Thrax.

Eagle Rampant - Building a Republican Roman Army - WIP - Part 2

Manufacturer:   Victriix Limited

Scale:   28mm

Hi,

within one of my last posts I showed the start of a new project - EagleRampant - a variant of the rules of LionRampant. The content was assembling the Republican Roman Cavalry for the PunicWars.

This time the post is about the Republican Roman Infantry with its Velites, Princeps, Hastati and Triarii.

The infantry was built out of 2 different boxes from Victrix and contains a total of 120 men split into three units of Velites (36 men in total), three units of Princeps (also 36 men in total), two units of better equipped Hastati (24 men in total), two units of elite Triarii (12 men in total) and 6 signifers and 6 officers.

That´s a lot of figures and normaly you do not need this much figures for building an army for EagleRampant (or LionRampant). But I could also split this army into two parts to play times of Roman civil wars. The assembling was very time consuming, cleaning up the mouldlines and glueing all the parts together. I finally got it today. But that was only the assembling.

The next job to do will be to prepare the bases and priming the total army. Not to forget to paint all these guys, knowing that there are also Carthaginians, Celts, Iberians, Samnites and Numidians waiting for the same process. I guess that I will have to become older than 85 years to finish this project. :)

I have already painted up one single cavalryman for testing the flesh tones. I used contrast paints for the flesh and I have put some highlights on it. It is no masterpiece, but in my opinion this came out quite good. Thinking about the enormous number of figures of this project I will have to use easy and fast painting methods. 

So keep your fingers crossed for me and let´s hope that the motivation on this project will last for a long time to get it done.

Cheers

Mike

An overview on the total Republican Roman Army.

Velites with helmets.

My favorite Velites with wolveskins.

Unarmoured Velites.

First unit of Princeps.

Second unit of Princeps.

The third unit of Princeps.

The first unit of Hastati...

...and the second one.

Two units of Triarii (6 men each) - The signifer and officer are just for show.

 I don´t know why Victrix has put 16 men in total into the box of the Roman Cavalry.
Normally for EagleRampnant six men per unit are enough. The first unit of Cavalry.

The second unit of Cavalry with the single painted test figure.

A close up of the test figure.

I would be happy if the whole cavalry is going to look like this figure.

The three packs from Victrix the army was built of. 136 men in total.

I will have to order more shield transfers as these few packs won´t be 
enough to fix them onto 136 shields.

Eagle Rampant - A variant of LionRampant placed in the times of the PunicWars

Manufacturer:   Victrix Unlimited 

Scale:   28mm

Hi,

within our group we have some guys who like LionRampant (2nd edition) very much. We had quite a lot games now and anytime had a great time using these rules. 

Normally these ruleset is made for medieval skirmish games. But I have found a very interesting variant on Facebook to be able to use the rules also for the PunicWars. It is called „EagleRampant“ and sounds good to me. If you are interested just follow this link.

EagleRampant

I am very interested into the 2nd Punic War and have a lot of Victrix-packs covering this topic. Only thing is to assemble all the miniatures not to mention having to paint them.

I am going to leave hospital in a bit more than one week. So my bloke Franz brought me at least three boxes for assembling last week. The first box I started with are the Roman Republican Cavalry. 

Here they are, ready for getting their bases and for priming. Next to be done is Iberian Cavalry. 

Cheers

Mike 

Field of Battle3 - Refighting the "Battle of Kunersdorf 1759" - Frederick´s greatest defeat

Manufacturers:  WargamesFoundry, CrusaderMiniatures, FrontRankMiniatures, DreispitzMiniatures

Scale:  28mm

Hi,

after having done a lot of posts about toysoldiers and AI  I recognized that it has been a long time since doing a report on topics concerning wargaming. Sad, but true.

So this post is dedicated to a game we are planning by using the rules of "Field of Battle 3". There will be another post about the game itself. This post is about some background.

I do have a really good collection of SYW Austrians. There are also SYW Russians on my shelves though the number of units is less compared to the Austrians. From the last games there are still a lot of SYW Prussians in my hobby bunker that belong to my friend Walter. Combine those armies and you could play the "Battle of Kunersdorf 1759".

Frederick the Great decided to fight a combined army of Russians lead by Salykov and Austrians under Loudon who had joined near Frankfurt Oder at Kunersdorf. The united forces of Russians and Austrians had been a great danger of marching against Berlin. The number of troops of this combined force was about 76.000 men and round about 430 guns. Furthermore the Russian position on the Mühlberg had entranchments. 

The Prussian force was about 49.900 men and 286 pieces of artillery. Though being outnumbered Frederick decided to fight this battle. Due to a march in the night he managed to place his force on the right wing of his enemies. After a good start for the Prussians the terrain had been a big problem for Frederick´s army. After six hours of fighting he Prussians force had been defeated. Two horses carrying Frederick during the battle had been shot. The Prussians lso 569 officers an 18.400 men dead or wounded, 26 colours, 2 standards, 172 artillery pieces and 110 ammunition wagons. This battle was one of Frederick´s worst defeat.  See further information at Kronoskaf.com or on YouTube.

But how to play this battle? Ok, there are already some scenarios in certain books, but I only have one version of a scenario in a book and this one did not seem to be suitable. So I wanted to try something different.

I asked google gemini to create a scenario for this battle. I have to point out that I didn´t ask for units, a certain dimension of the table nor did I tell the AI that we want to use the rules of "Field of Battle 3". The result was an AI created scenario based on the dimensions 6´x4´. The program also gave a recommendation about the number of units to use per side. It even told me somethng about the  history of this battle.

Thinking of the number of units we had at disposal I played a bit with the dimensions. I asked for a         12´x4´sized scenario. That could have been feasible for there are two gaming tables in my gaming room that can be connected, so you could play games of at least 5m wide and 1,60m deep. But this plan was soon discarded, The battelefield would have been to widespread and there also would have been to many manouvres done before first action and fighting started.

So another trial with 8´x4´. The program adapted the scenario and the units to the new dimensions and asked for the rulesystem we were going to play. After that google gemini gave an "Order of battle" to me for both sides devided into three brigades on each side and the units within each brigade. It also added the values of dice (D4 to D12) for every unit and gave advice for the ArmyMoralePoints.

I asked for a battlemap showing the terrain and also got a good proposal.

AI is a very good help for creating scenarios, but to be honest, it is also very tricky. You can´t really rely on all results. The lettering of the battlemap was not accurate, we also had to rethink about the values of dice per unit and sized the AMP´s down. It also had been a very difficult thing to place the terrain of the created battlemap in reality. While doing this I realized that it almost would be impossible to place all the units on the battlefield. Though we already reduced the UI´s from 4 to 3 (we had a problem concerning the number of figures) there probably would be not enough space for manouvre. So my layout of terrain now has the dimensions 8´x5,3´ (2,4m by 1,6m).

So now we will have to try if scenarios created by AI will work. Are the units well balanced, is the terrain playable, how about the dimensions combined with the number of units? We will see and I will keep you informed.

Thanks to my comrade Franz, who gave me advices in matters of "Field of battle" and who also has done the revision of the unit stads and AMP´s.

Here are some pictures about the preparation of the game. The AI created battlemap, the terrain I tried to lay out as near as possible to the map, the compilation of the adversarial forces, the revised Order of Battle for both sides and of course an overview on my wargaming room.

Hope you like it. :)

Cheers

Mike

Painting of Prussian Grenadiers storming the Mühlenberg (AI created).

Two battlemaps of Kunersdorf that can be found in Battlebooks.

The AI created battlemap as a template for the layout of the terrain.

My implementation of the layout as near as possible to the battlemap.

Kunersdorf is already burning an the Mühlenberg is heavily fortified with entranchments.

The order of battle for the Russian/Austrian force.

The figures for the Russian/Austrian force.

The order of battle for the Prussians.

Frederick the Great and his tiny soldiers.

Both forces next to each other.

A view into my complete wargaming room.

Another view onto the battlefield, I will need a Russian flag of the SYW aswell.

Refighting "The Battle of Kunersdorf" - I will be there.